'I won't even go so far as to say "William."'
He laughed as obligingly as though the jest had been a good one. A little ashamed, its maker hastened to leave it behind.
'There's nothing I should quite so much hate talking about as politics—saving your presence.'
'Ah!'
'I was thinking of something much more important.'
Even her rallying tone did not wholly reassure the poor man.
'More important?' he repeated.
'Yes; I long to know (and I long to be forgiven for asking), what Order that is you are wearing, and what you did to get it.'
Haycroft breathed freely. He talked for the next ten minutes about the bauble, making a humorous translation of its Latin 'posy,' and describing in the same vein the service to a foreign state that had won him the recognition. He wouldn't have worn the thing to-night except out of compliment to the ambassador from the Power in question. They were going on together to the reception at the Foreign Office. As to the Order, Haycroft seemed to feel he owed it to himself to smile at all such toys, but he did not disdain to amuse the pretty lady with the one in question, any more than being humane (and even genial sitting before Mrs. Freddy's menu), he would have refused to show the whirring wheels of his watch to a nice child. The two got on so well that the anxious look quite faded out of Mrs. Freddy's face, and she devoted herself gaily to the distinguished foreigner at her side. But Haycroft at a party was, like so many Englishmen, as the lilies of the field. They toil not, neither do they spin. The man Vida had rescued from Mrs. Graham Townley was, when in the society of women, so accustomed to seeing them take on themselves the onus of entertainment, was himself so unused to being at the smallest trouble, that when the 'Order' was exhausted, had Vida not invented another topic, there would have been an absolute cessation of all converse till Mrs. Graham Townley had again caught him up like a big reluctant fish on the hook of interrogation. At a reproachful aside from Lord Borrodaile, Miss Levering broke off in the middle of her second subject to substitute, 'But I am monopolizing you disgracefully,' and she half turned away from the eminent politician into whose slightly flushed face and humid eyes had come something like animation.
'Not at all. Not at all. Go on.'